News item: The U.S. television ratings for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals between New Jersey and Los Angeles were down a whopping 33 percent from last year’s opener between Boston and Vancouver (2.9 million viewers, compared with 4.5 million).

How did this happen? Isn’t it the dream of any national TV network executive to have the two biggest U.S. markets — New York/New Jersey and Los Angeles — to be involved in a championship final? You would think.

But the lousy ratings prop up the larger truth: Big markets don’t make for big TV ratings — big stars make for big ratings.

Many years ago, I got into a debate with Brett Hull about the issue of why the NHL always seemed to have poor U.S. TV ratings. “The league doesn’t promote the players,” said Hull, then with the Dallas Stars.

Maybe that was part of the problem, I said. But the much larger problem was: You guys don’t promote yourselves. You’re all nice guys, I said. You’re great to deal with, the best in pro sports. But you’re too vanilla. It’s endearing to much of the hockey fan base, I added, but the fact is that too many players go unnoticed by the general U.S. sports fan because of their “there are no stars here, it’s all about the team, don’t say anything that will dispel that here” modus operandi.

Hull thought for a second and said, “Yeah, maybe that’s right.”

Fact is, New Jersey and Los Angeles are full of excellent players — with some of the highest-paid in the NHL. But they’re unknown to the Joe Sixpacks out there because of their button-down, keep-it-quiet organizational philosophies. Martin Brodeur is probably the best-known player in the series — as well he should be — but the Devils have always been a terrible national draw. Even in their own market, they don’t draw; New Jersey ranked 24th in the 30-team league in attendance this season, at 15,396 per game. (The non-playoff Avalanche ranked 23rd).

The NHL got lucky the last few years with some big-market, Original Six teams in the Finals. Original Sixers always do well in the ratings. New Jersey and L.A. are big markets, but nobody in New York cares about the Devils, and Los Angeles is the classic big hockey market where there are enough fans to sell out the Staples Center, but not much more.

Anybody who wants to see how little the media in L.A. cares or knows about the Kings just needs to YouTube a couple of clips of the local TV sportscasts recently, where they were referred to as the “Sacramento” Kings and star defenseman Drew Doughty was called “Brad Doty.”

Maybe the ratings will improve as the series goes along, but don’t count on it. Should NHL players make spectacles of themselves with outrageous comments and/or be selfish self-promoters? Well, I don’t want that, really. But if you want to be noticed in this country, to get people talking and tuning in, you can’t be too vanilla.

This has been the NHL Players’ Association’s problem for a long time, and until hockey figures out how to stand out more, it will continue to get ratings near the bottom of the big-sports totem pole.

Lidstrom retires. The best news the Avalanche and 28 other teams got last week? Nick Lidstrom, 42, finally retired from the Red Wings. It didn’t seem like it would ever happen. He was the hockey cyborg, the guy who never got old, never lost a step, never lost any skill. He said he didn’t have the motivation anymore to play at the level he was accustomed to.

WASHINGTON — Thirty games into the 82-game NHL season, and nearly six weeks after the Matt Duchene trade, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic discussed the state of his team before Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at the Washington Capitals.